I know I occasionally make a snide comment in the chat room about people not clicking the ads here on the site often enough, and it's a bit of a running chuckle - especially in the early days of the relaunched site when the ads were all porno and viagra and penis enlargement.

But, the thing is, I just checked my ad stats, and apparently, nobody's clicked a single ad here since October 26. So, as of Boxing Day, that will be two straight months that this site won't have returned me a single shiny penny for my efforts.

Now, I hate to have to bark orders, or whine like one of those miserable street corner bums who won't go out and get a job, but seriously guys, this is a bit outrageous. I mean, I know this dive aint a place that could ever be worth a membership fee or any kind of real payment - hell, even if I charged a five cent per month registration fee, I'd probably never see a single user here again - but when all I ask for this free service is that you occasionally click the banner up top, or one of the ad links below the navbar on the left, I don't think that's a lot to ask!

I've always hated website advertising, but in the case of free communities like this, it's unfortunately a neccesary evil. But I've gone out of my way to keep SocDev's advertising as inoffensive as possible - I've always vehemently avoided pop-ups, pop-unders, interstitial ads, animated GIF/Flash ads, ads with audio, those fucking godawful mock interactive banners that try to trick you into clicking them... and countless other notorious web nasties. I've kept it to one simple, tidy banner up top, and those five little mild text links in what used to be unused empty space under the navbar. That's more respect for the user's viewing comfort than most webmasters these days will have when it comes to their profit margins.

So really, I don't think I'm asking a lot if once in a while, people just click something. I mean for fuck's sake, for the sake of one mouseclick - two at most, if you need to hit the Back button or close a new window afterwards - it's the difference between this website being competely and utterly profitless and funded 100% out of my own very empty pockets, or having it actually earn a couple of cents here and there. Still not even close to even covering the cost of the domain, let alone any kind of profit, but still, it's the principle. I hate to cliché, but every cent counts!

So come on, you shiftless moochers. Click a damn link. Click one right now, and then please have the decency to at LEAST click on a month if not regularly. I never ask for anything else around here, and I put a decent whack of effort in to keep SocDev up and running, maintained, spam-free and comfy for everybody. So have a little gratitude and spare me one lousy mouse click of the thousands or hundreds of thousands of mouse clicks you make every month in the course of your normal computer usage. It's not a huge ask!